VacationSelector

Tromso or Washington DC?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Tromso
27
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Washington DC
✓ Best match
52
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

TromsoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Tromso leads by 34 points.34
TromsoWashington DC
Score5218
Swim season months03
Beaches 10 km141
Coast distance0 km34 km
Water distance0 km34 km
Places to eat. Washington DC leads by 53 points.53
TromsoWashington DC
Score2477
Restaurants within 2 km of centre851,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1636
Museums & heritage. Washington DC leads by 32 points.32
TromsoWashington DC
Score2355
Museums within 10 km1083
Museums within 2 km of centre855
Share of museums within 2 km %8066
Unesco sites within 50 km00
Nightlife. Washington DC leads by 54 points.54
TromsoWashington DC
Score761
Drinking venues within 4 km671,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre61593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %9158
Nightclubs within 4 km554
Nature & day trips. Washington DC leads by 31 points.31
TromsoWashington DC
Score1142
Protected land share 50 km %910
Landscape blanket share 50 km %91
Land share of disc %6594
Park area within 2 km7 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Washington DC leads by 24 points.24
TromsoWashington DC
Score1438
Tourist attractions within 2 km97
Park area within 2 km7 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km01
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 48 points.48
TromsoWashington DC
Score2876
Notable places within 2 km20305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tromso leads by 11 points.11
TromsoWashington DC
Score5443
Price level global85.1100
Daily budget€203—
Year-round weather. Washington DC leads by 29 points.29
TromsoWashington DC
Score3362
Monthly daytime high-1.1 °C to 16.3 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall56 mm to 128 mm65 mm to 108 mm
Dry months00
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Tromso
-1
-1
1
4
9
13
16
15
11
5
2
0
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Tromso
5
5
4
4
6
8
10
11
10
9
7
6
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Tromso
108
95
97
71
56
57
73
90
110
128
94
110
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Tromso
2
7
12
16
22
24
24
18
14
9
4
0
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Tromso
0
1
3
6
8
8
8
6
3
2
0
0
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tromso: 1991-2020 normals, Tromso (0.9 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTromsoWashington DC
CopenhagenCPH
2 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
3 h 20 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ZurichZRH
3 h 40 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 30 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
AmsterdamAMS
3 h 5 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 0 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
ViennaVIE
3 h 30 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
9 h 5 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MunichMUC
3 h 30 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
BarcelonaBCN
4 h 35 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
8 h 20 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
MadridMAD
4 h 45 m
no fares
TOS · 4 km
7 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-09 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureTromsoWashington DC
Official languageNorwegian, Nynorsk, Bokmål, Sámi–
CurrencyNorwegian Krone (NOK)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 112, ambulance 113, fire 110911
Elevation20 m72 m
Main airportTromsø Airport (TOS)4 km from centre45 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureTromsoWashington DC
City population79,943689,545
People per km²323,896
Museums within 10 km899
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km00
Distinct cuisines in the centre2382
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tromso or Washington DC somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.